Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The Usual Drip-feed of Back-handed Hatefulness Starts Again in Europe

I suspect that is has more to do with a unconscious maintaining of unsupportable illusions about self regard, wanting, more than anything, that they have a larger place in the world than they really do anything to deserve.

“Cooperation Minister” Alain Joyandet, a post only needed where one trying to repair generalized dysfunction, implied rather childishly that because they couldn’t wedge a French aircraft carrying a field hospital in right away, that the US military was “occupying Haiti”. This, of course fires up the usual nonsense you hear about some Europeans’ favorite straw man. So much so that the subtext does not need to be signaled to the public immune to the evidence of just WHO is supplying the bulk of assistance to Haiti and WHERE THEY COME FROM.

Clearly slamming the US with their inability to take, what is in effect, a cow-patch and magically give it the capacity of O’Hare.

Given that I heard today from CNBC's London business news operation an innumeration of who's gone into Haiti, mentioning EU and US GOVERNMENT donation PLEDGES, and that there are 9000 "UN aid workers" and 2000 Marines "on the way". No mention was made of those funny grey aircraft and ships from some unknown nation, or those 6500 men and women in green with US flags on their right shoulders from –gee, some unidentified nation- or the fact that the vast majority of aid is being provided by independent American charities and the US and Canadian militaries.

Also unmentioned the myriad of other national governments, militaries, and aid organizations that have poured in, even if the efforts are comparitively symbolic, the luvvies are usually fond of trying to mention something like the one aircraft of aid that thug autocrat Hugo Chavez sent -first-.

To correct CNBC London: far more than the 200 Marines mentioned are on the way, and the 6500 or the 7000 “UN troops” mentioned yesterday by Ban Ki Moon are American, “helmetized” to the omission of their origin in the press. Let’s hope that they can improve the image of the U.N. Peacekeeper

I am also never surprised by the emotionalized crypto-political exploitation that props up in 'humanist circles' when Americans are being forthcoming, and their favored proxies and vessels of their inert hopes are failing miserably to do as is wished by their egos.

Amusingly we find a French poster at the Puffington Host who leaps to find in the usual fog of unrelated accusation about how “the US did nothing in Bosnia” and the Asian Tsunami disaster, sour grapes about France-bashing, as though there was no cause for it in the pleasure so many Europeans have shown to be taking in Joyandet’s comment.

As is usual with the likes of these folks, their interest in humanity is self-declared, the desire to respect the autonomy of cultures comes right out the next time you pull the ring on the doll’s back, and finally you have the statement “I’m a big fan of American politics” implying that they know a great deal about American society – more than Americans, should they ever try to explain it to her:

The US army is a lot about image, and posturing (see hollywood movies) but they lack of a good intelligence division.

See? It’s all right there in the MOVIES! Everything you ever wanted to know, (or want to assume is true)! See! See! Not only that, anything I happen to think is also about anything and everything else a fevered mind can relate to it!

We were right about Irak, our forces ar doing great in Somalia, our secret services has every terror plot dismantled here in France (and believe me we are at risk). Why? Because they do not brag, they do not posture and the get the job done.

They do NOT get the job done, and if the line above was not bragging of the “but I... I... THINK my imaginary American foil brags to my hateful satisfaction!”, do please clear up WHAT it’s meant to imply.

Further we find the near mechanical display of “let’s make this work one way” nonsense, where a “diverse” humanity is expected through the derision of people who name themselves “ImissKitten,” to think monolithically about life.

I'm a US political junkie, and I'm amazed by Americans poor judgment sometimes, but I respect you.So stay classy.

She clearly does NOT respect people that she believes are so two-dimensional compared to herself that they are little different than characters in emotionally loaded characters in film fiction.

Let’s get this back into perspective. Many of the comments at the Grauniad, UK’s Telegraph, and Le Monde, imply that it’s a dispute or disagreement such and such is having with the U.S. It isn’t. It is the usual raft of cheap accusations aimed at the United States by armchair critics at the expense of the suffering.